Cat Island

Finally giving up on the right amount and direction of wind to take us southward down the Exuma chain, towards Georgetown, we gave up on Plan A and started Plan B.  Plan B took us directly eastward, in a moderate southeast wind, across the Exuma Sound and to the settlement of New Bight on Cat Island. The sea was choppy and the winds high at first. Then towards the end of our 11 hour crossing, the winds died to almost nothing and the waves subsided. Friends Marion & Greg and Dorothy & Win sailed with us.  This morning we awoke to absolute stillness, shown in the quiet waters around our boat.  The bottom and our anchor chain are quite clear.

Cat Island is most famous for Father Jerome's Hermitage  (check on those underlined, italicized words and you will have a link to an article about it).  Father Jerome, first Anglican and then Catholic, was a missionary in the Bahamas in the mid 1900's, building beautiful churches of both faiths on the islands.  He was a trained architect.  As a final home for himself, he built his hermitage on Mt. Alvernia, the highest point in the Bahamian chain, a whopping 206 feet high.

So, off we all trotted to Mt. Alvernia this morning before the forecast high winds started this afternoon. First, past the old Loyalist ruins. The sign reads "Henry Hawkins Armbrister's Great House". This was a plantation built in the "pre Loyalist" 1760's, and said to be burned by its slaves shortly before the British Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 which freed slaves in all British territories (30 years before the US Emancipation Proclamation).

 Our "discoveries" along the road were almost as much fun as the hermitage. The "bread lady" of the town has attempted to grow vegetables along the road.  Big plots, local trees and weeds intermingled with tomato plants, squashes, pumpkins, papaya trees,

 several types of peas/beans, cabbage plants,

corn, and banana trees.  The plots are unkept looking and scattered, you have to really look to realize what you are seeing.

But it's an effort to grow vegetables and a drastic improvement to the roadside of 2 years ago.


Next, up to Father Jerome's.

The Stations of the Cross are along the path up to the hermitage.

The back of the hermitage is beautiful, too.  The funny thing about this?  At less than 5'4", I am taller than the entrance to the tower.

After our walk, we went to the Blue Bird Restaurant for beers and conch fritters.  Then down the street to the little market, where we met Mr. Pompeii Johnson.  He explained that he, too, was ultimately from Virginia.  His family have one part of the island, while the Armbristers have the other part (see the above Loyalist ruin...).  The slaves brought to the Bahamas by their Loyalist owners often took their owner's family name.  We also met a lady who whacked open the coconuts that we had collected, explaining the differences in coconuts.  Ultimately, we ordered coconut tarts from her mom, to be picked up tomorrow.  big grin!!!

The day was graying and the wind picking up.  Back to our boats for the late afternoon and evening.  Tomorrow we hope to go in and pick up tarts, a few groceries, and maybe a hand woven straw basket.